The Reel Review
In late December 1972, the discovery that 16 passengers had survived 72 days after their chartered plane crashed in the remote, snow-covered Andes Mountains shocked the world, even more so when it was later discovered that survivors, many of them members of a Uruguayan rugby team, had to eat the dead to survive. Enzo Vogrincic stars in this historical disaster adventure, as told from the perspective of passenger Numa Turcotti.
As well done as the 1993 adaptation Alive was, director J.A. Bayona (A Monster Calls, The Impossible) exceeds it, in both the accuracy of actual events – which included back-to-back avalanches on day 17 that killed several of the initial crash survivors – and details of the eventual rescue, even recapturing the actual photos survivors took. Casting entirely Uruguayan and Argentine actors, Bayona also gives a much more dire and realistic portrait of the hardships survivors faced, all while managing to add his own clever and very poignant twist to the film. It is haunting.
The only real drawback is that with just so many characters dying so frequently, there is little time for character development in the first half of the film, making it difficult to decipher who is who. A few brief flashbacks do help a bit, and it is a very minor criticism for a film that masterfully handles such an unimaginable and grisly tragedy with unwavering sensitivity and compassion.
REEL FACTS
• Three real life survivors make brief appearances in the film. Fernando Parrado appears at the beginning, opening a door at the airport. Roberto Canessa, who accompanied Parrado on that fateful, final walk to rescue, is shown at the end of the film as a doctor receiving the survivors. And Carlos Paez portrays his own father, the late renowned artist Carlos Paez Vilaro, announcing the list of survivors to the radio by telephone.
• How were there so many cigarettes? Survivor Javier Methol was a sales representative for his family’s tobacco company “Abal Hermanos” and was traveling with lots of product.
• 14 of the 16 crash survivors are still alive. Javier Methol died of cancer at the age of 79 in 2015, and José Luis “Coche” Inciarte died in 2023, just before the completion of the film.
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